Chapter 2

2.

Heather Vance was the woman Ethan could never have, the obsession that drove every beat of his heart.

I was the one who had chased him since our college days.

During my sophomore year, under the envious eyes of everyone on campus, I confessed my feelings. I became his girlfriend.

Back then, he never said he loved me. I was full of hope, thinking that if I loved him enough, I could find a way into his heart.

I believed I could eventually become his one and only.

But when she came back, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, there was always a permanent seat reserved for her.

There was one night when Ethan got drunk and mistook me for Heather.

He gently stroked my cheek and whispered her name. His voice was filled with a warmth and tenderness he had never shown me.

I sat there, frozen. His vision was blurred, a dazed smile on his lips as if he were seeing his perfect woman.

That was the moment I finally understood. He only agreed to date me, and eventually marry me, because I shared a few of her features.

However, once she returned to New York, even that fake tenderness vanished.

Ethan suddenly saw our resemblance as a stain, a way of insulting her perfection.

From then on, everything I did was wrong. If I wore her favorite color or used her perfume, he would scold me.

Even if I tied my hair in a way that looked like hers, he would give me a disgusted look.

The most pathetic thing I ever did was fall in love with a man who never belonged to me.

I brushed my fingers over my burned skin and called my old mentor who was living abroad.

If I was nothing more than a shadow beneath her light, it was time for me to disappear.